McCain urges lawmakers to back Obama’s plan for Syria

WASHINGTON ­— The White House’s aggressive push for congressional approval of an attack on Syria appeared to have won the tentative support of one of President Barack Obama’s most hawkish Republican critics, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who said Monday that he supported a “limited” strike if the president did more to arm the Syrian opposition.

In an hourlong meeting at the White House, McCain said Obama gave general support to doing more for the Syrian rebels, although no specifics were discussed. In the same conversation, which also included Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, officials said that Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to train the Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, which have been trained by the CIA, was beginning to sneak into Syria.

There appeared to be broad agreement with the president, McCain and Graham said, that any attack on Syria should be to “degrade” the Syrian government’s delivery systems - which could include aircraft, artillery and the kind of rockets that the Obama administration says were used by the forces of President Bashar Assad to carry out an Aug. 21 sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs that killed more than 1,400 people. The senators said they plan to meet with Susan E. Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, to discuss the strategy in greater depth.

“It is all in the details, but I left the meeting feeling better than I felt before about what happens the day after and that the purpose of the attack is going to be a little more robust than I thought,” Graham said in an interview.

But McCain said in an interview that the Obama did not say specifically what weapons might be provided to the opposition or discuss in detail what Syrian targets might be attacked.

“There was no concrete agreement, ‘OK, we got a deal,’” McCain said. “Like a lot of things, the devil is in the details.” In remarks to reporters outside the West Wing, McCain called the meeting “encouraging,” urged lawmakers to support Obama in his plan for military action in Syria and said a no vote in Congress would be “catastrophic” for the United States and its credibility in the world. McCain said he believed after his conversation with the president that any strikes would be “very serious” and not “cosmetic.”

Although the words from McCain and Graham were a positive development for Obama and a critical part of the administration’s lobbying blitz on Syria on Monday, the White House still faces a tough fight in Congress.

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1 Comment

1

wavettore
over 5 years
ago

There is no doubt that these chemical attacks were carried out by the opposition rebels guided by Israeli, UK and US secret services. Like there is no doubt that Obama was pushed over and over to fight this war and finally fell into the trap of the Zionists. But this uncomfortable position could offer the perfect timing for Obama to turn the boat around and change the American foreign policy. The same hidden hand that carried out 9/11 and supplied the false evidence before the war in Iraq is now responsible for these chemical attacks to escalate the Conflict.Instead of an aimless attack in Syria, Obama should put all his efforts to first find those responsible for these chemical attacks and then go after their sponsors. Then he would find out that CIA and other secret State agencies are acting independently from the US president and under the umbrella of an Anglo-Judaic group with an agenda aiming at a War of Religion meaning World War 3.

A group of Zionists with George Bush still today at the head of secret services in the US, UK and Israel, is plotting what now would seem unthinkable.

A new event of great magnitude will expand everywhere the conflict between Jews, Muslims and Christians.

The next World War of Religion is already a done deal behind the backs of all people which will be forced to fight for their own Countries in their obligation as citizens. This is to bring chaos and anarchy in all places and to build in the end the most sinister dictatorship, a death machine, the New World Order.

The Deception supported by the media is the Zionists main weapon and there is a risk that most people will realize what is happening only when it will be too late and there will be no alternatives.

From here it is the need to now lay the foundations for one alternative Front to oppose this detailed Zionist Plan which is founded upon the Biblical concept of one "chosen people" and that justifies any mean based on its Belief that Equality does not exist.

The platform of this Front must outline for the future one clear Direction to present to the people as an alternative to the pyramidal system in which we live. It must also solve the Human conflict at its root where is buried the dilemma between Individualism and Equality. For this, it will take a new form of government called Commutalism.